Archive
Getting to Net-Zero in Canada: Summary
Feb 8, 2024
Scale of the problem, government projections and daunting challenges The urgency of mitigating climate change through significant emission reductions is globally recognized—most recently with the call to transition away from fossil fuels at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP28). Canada has long accepted this challenge: its latest pledge… View Article
New labour legislation to continue gig worker precarity
Feb 1, 2024
Gig work is widely recognized as having all of the characteristics of precarious employment: typically temporary, part-time or casual, low paid, lacking in predictable work hours and job security without health and welfare benefits and protections. Research into precarious gig work in BC has revealed that app-based ride-hail and food delivery gig workers are predominantly… View Article
Knives out for Clean BC
Jan 25, 2024
It’s taken sixteen years of incremental policy change in BC but you might have noticed that climate policies are starting to take hold. Electric vehicles are widespread, new building standards with much higher energy efficiency are being introduced and heat pump sales have surged as people replace home heating equipment. Nonetheless, the long knives are… View Article
A paradox in COVID-19 pandemic recovery: Increased precarity of women hotel workers in British Columbia
Jan 24, 2024
REPORT: While BC’s accommodations and food services sector (AFS) received over a billion dollars in government COVID-19 subsidies, women workers—predominantly racialized and immigrants—either lost their employment or had hours and income significantly reduced…. View Article
Our Hopes and Dreams for Public Education
Jan 11, 2024
We know there are significant pressures facing our valued public education system—overcrowding, chronic underfunding, a growing teacher shortage and inadequate support for students with diverse learning needs to name just a few. These cracks in our school system command our immediate attention and require our concerted advocacy. When we’re focused on the problems and pressing… View Article
Beyond “Happy Holidays!”: it’s time to support Canada’s increasing religious diversity
Dec 22, 2023
Canada’s religious demographics have changed in the last 20 years. This is not being reflected in all facets of the structural fabric of society, particularly in the context of work and holidays…. View Article
Government must do more than shuffle chairs to solve BC’s water woes
Dec 20, 2023
British Columbia’s Ministry of Forests was always a poor choice to manage the province’s water resources—and it showed. So it was fitting in October that the government decided after years of being urged to do so to transfer that power to the Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship. But shunting public servants between ministries… View Article
Time for change: A farewell message from CCPA-BC Director Shannon Daub
Dec 15, 2023
Dear friends, It is with mixed feelings that I share my decision with you to move on from the CCPA. Mixed because I am ready for a change in my career, but that doesn’t spare me the heartache of saying goodbye to an organization I’ve had the honour of helping to build over the past… View Article
Provincial zoning reform essential to reduce housing exclusion and displacement
Dec 14, 2023
Sky-high rents, ultra-low vacancy rates and fierce competition for scarce homes have become the grim but familiar picture of housing in BC, driving unaffordability, exclusion and displacement. The BC government has made major housing policy announcements in recent weeks and a key focus has been tackling chronic municipal roadblocks to new housing. For decades, exclusionary… View Article
New protections for BC platform workers entrench racism
Dec 13, 2023
In November 2023, the BC Ministry of Labour announced new employment standards that claim to “bring fairness” to the estimated 40,000 ride-hail and food-delivery workers in BC. The move comes after a year of public engagement with platform workers, platform companies and labour experts, which brought to the fore the precarious working conditions of platform… View Article
Growing toll of COVID-19 on hospitals & population health should concern us
Dec 5, 2023
New data from Statistics Canada and the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) paint a troubling picture of the growing toll of COVID-19 on population health and provincial health systems. These findings come as public health authorities and governments have rolled back most measures that reduce SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) transmission, even as… View Article
Time to end information hide-and-seek games: Public deserves more prompt government disclosure of basic data
Nov 16, 2023
No one should be told to file a Freedom of Information request simply to learn who works for them. Government must give members of the public access to up-to-date and useful information on who is there to serve them and quit obfuscating and abusing access to information laws, Ben Parfitt writes…. View Article
Affordability crisis will persist until we get a handle on runaway housing costs
Nov 15, 2023
Although inflation has come down from the historic highs recorded in 2022, the cost of living in Metro Vancouver continues to increase rapidly. It now takes an hourly wage of $25.68 in Metro Vancouver for two parents each working full-time to support a family of four. This is the 2023 living wage for Metro Vancouver,… View Article
Raising the bar: Our recommendations for equitable gig work in BC
Nov 2, 2023
Platform companies like Uber, Lyft and Skip the Dishes derive profits at the expense of taxpayers’ contributions and workers’ health and safety.
The BC government has a unique opportunity to set high standards for sustainable, responsible platform work and we are pleased to support the government’s deliberations on this issue. Read our 12 recommendations. … View Article
Reality check: BC government can afford to make more investments in urgent social and environmental priorities
Oct 31, 2023
Provincial government spending as a share of GDP still hasn’t recovered after decades-old social spending cuts under the previous government despite growing need for public investment…. View Article
2023 Gideon Rosenbluth Memorial Lecture with Economist Ha-Joon Chang
Oct 24, 2023
(video) Economist Ha-Joon Chan delivers the 2023 Gideon Rosenbluth Memorial Lecture, co-hosted by the CCPA-BC and the UBC Vancouver School of Economics…. View Article
What would it take to meet Canada’s 2030 climate targets?
Oct 5, 2023
Adapted from the CCPA’s fall 2023 submission to Canada’s Net-Zero Advisory Body by Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood & Marc Lee When Canada first signed the Paris Agreement way back in 2015, the commitment to reduce domestic greenhouse gas emissions by 30% below 2005 levels by 2030 seemed far away. So far away, in fact, that in… View Article
Fires and farmworkers: Climate justice means improving protections for migrant farmworkers
Sep 15, 2023
The impacts of the climate crisis are socially and geographically uneven: the wealthiest regions contribute disproportionately to the destruction of the planet while the poorest regions suffer the heaviest consequences. In this context, migrant farmworkers find themselves doubly displaced, facing droughts and inundations in their home countries, then heatwaves, fires and floods where they come… View Article
Failure to act means failing dikes
Sep 13, 2023
Province must take responsibility for flood protection infrastructure Provincial and municipal officials were warned repeatedly that the dikes in one of the cities hit hardest by the floods that paralyzed southern British Columbia in 2021 were structurally unsound and could fail should water levels in local rivers rise quickly. For years preceding the disaster,… View Article
Here’s how BC should protect app-based workers
Sep 6, 2023
The rise of the “gig economy” and on-demand work through digital platforms like Uber and Skip the Dishes has ignited the public debate about precarious work. Despite their high-tech image, digital platform firms employ practices that are familiar from centuries of insecure work, including compensating workers on a per-task basis, offering no guarantee of continuing… View Article